JAMIE GEORGE cooked up the Haka challenge that sent New Zealand spinning out of their comfort zone.
England beat them 33-19 and the hooker insists “this is just the start”.
The hooker hatched the plan to line up in a loop and confront the Maori dance in a Twickenham version of the “flying V” from the 2019 World Cup semi win over them.
George said: “It was me, yeah. We wanted to replicate 2019 [in Japan] because we hadn’t done it here.”
The Saracens star, 35, explained why he had concocted the destabilisation tactic which saw sub Henry Pollock, 20, literally licking his lips in anticipation.
He said: “I felt like starting in a flat line and then heading into the ‘V’ would be pretty cool.
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“You don’t want to get too complicated or have to explain it too much. The theory was the oldest would be on one side, the youngest on the other.
“So I was on one side, Henry Pollock the other — we were reluctant to give it to Henry because we weren’t sure what he was going to get up to — with Maro Itoje in the middle of the V.
“I thought it would be one of those old school sort of Brian Moore days where we’d be face to face and I quite liked the idea.
“The players got on board with it. Maro said, ‘As long as we don’t have to have too many rehearsals’.
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“We just spoke through it on Friday night. You’d be amazed at the amount of questions I had.
“We speak a lot about the connection with fans and making match days fun and a special thing to come to.
“A response like that is great but backing up with that performance was the most important thing.”
It was only England’s ninth win over the All Blacks in 120 years of rivalry.
But George, one of the survivors of the 2019 victory in Yokohama, is confident that it will be the platform for even bigger things.
Steve Borthwick’s side are now on a run of ten straight wins after running in four tries to fight back from 12-0 down on Saturday afternoon.
And George added: “We’re in a really good spot and the nice thing is that we still feel there’s plenty to come.
“We’re taking a huge amount of confidence from what we’re doing and where we are going.”
